Slaughter and May aims to uplift the existing 18.8 per cent of its workforce from lower social backgrounds to 25 per cent by 2023. The firm’s ambition extends to its legal workforce, of which only 10 per cent currently come from lower social backgrounds, with a goal to increase this to 15 per cent.

The proportion of staff from lower social backgrounds involved in support roles such as business development, human resources, and IT stands at 34 per cent, and the firm plans to increase this to 40 per cent.

Social background is identified by the parents’ occupations when the individual was aged 14. Occupations such as plumbers or receptionists denote a lower social stratum.

Slaughter and May has adopted the Rare Contextual Recruitment System designed to expand its recruitment scope by assessing candidates based on their socioeconomic background. The system is used by several law firms to consider candidates’ educational accomplishments against their broader personal context. The firm, already using this for its lawyers, now plans to implement it for its broader workforce. It also aims to report social mobility pay gaps annually, in addition to existing gender pay gap data.

The firm plans to engage graduates from a broader selection of universities and target younger individuals to meet its goal. It will begin offering bursaries to potential lawyers aged 18 to assist with degree costs and is contemplating apprenticeship schemes.

Deborah Finkler, managing partner at Slaughter and May, said: “We’re sure that there are lots of talented people out there who either don’t think of a career in law or who don’t think of a career here.” She added: “Tracking the socioeconomic make up of our workforce over a long period of time means that we have confidence in the data we are using to set these public targets and measure our progress. This focus and transparency means we can hold ourselves accountable and sends a clear message about our intentions to enhance and maintain a diverse workforce.”